


The Three Duffel System

by HazelDomain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bickering, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:31:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6554947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelDomain/pseuds/HazelDomain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up in hotel rooms doesn't leave a whole lot of room for boundaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Three Duffel System

 

It’s not even two and a half men. It’s one man, one kid, and one baby.

There’s a routine.

Three duffel bags.

Dean picks it up like a champ, running last checks on the hotel room, making sure that all Sam’s things are picked up. Sammy doesn’t know how to use a laundry bag, his clothes lie where he leaves them.

 

By the time Sammy’s four, he’s carrying his own duffel, which isn’t to say he knows how to pack it. Half his stuff is in Dean’s bag, rescued from hiding places in nighstand drawers or tangled in bed sheets.

Sometimes Sam takes everything out of Dean’s bag and climbs inside. Dean zips him up and he giggles until the dark gets to him and he shrieks and has to be extricated before he wakes the neighbors.

 

Once, Sam takes everything out of all the bags and puts it into the drawers because the picture book with the faded _‘Cuyahoga Public Library’_ sticker says that clothes go in drawers. It also says kids have moms, but, as Sam told the nice lady in the checkout line at 7/11, his mommy was in a car accident and she lives in heaven now.

John puts everything back in the bags and takes the book away. Sam cries and Dean says he’ll find him a better one, with dinosaurs. Sam likes dinosaurs. The book ends up being about tractors instead of dinosaurs, but Sam likes tractors, too (he sees them on the side of the road sometimes) and so he puts the book into the bag he now thinks of as _his._

There’s a system.

Three duffel bags.

 

Being possessive doesn’t last long on the road, when _mine_ only buys you a smug grin the next time it’s you that’s out of toothpaste or deodorant or clean socks. John doesn’t need to say ‘share with your brother’ because that system worked itself out a long time ago. Most of Sam’s clothes are too big because they’re both growing fast as weeds and Dean needs bigger stuff, too.

They put dirty laundry in Sam’s bag. Dean carries the clean. John carries his own.

There’s a system.

 

Dean starts borrowing stuff out of his dad’s bag just after he turns fourteen. Razors. Aftershave. Eventually he commandeers a Led Zeppelin shirt that’s older than he is, and John gets a weird faraway look in his eye.

That’s when the six-month cycle starts.

 

John never does the birds and the bees talk, and Dean never asks. He figures if it’s important, his dad’ll let him know. He’s not wrong.

He goes into John’s duffel for a pair of jeans and finds a magazine. That’s how Dean meets Anna Nicole Smith. He sneaks the magazine into his own duffel and guards it adamantly for two days until John tells him to knock it off.

Sam, ten years old at the time, pays no attention to the magazine and focuses on the stash of kit-kats he knows Dean keeps in the inner pocket.

 

Four years later, Sam asks Dean to tell him about girls. Dean grins and says wait.

It’s a six month cycle, he says. Like clockwork.

Three weeks later the Impala pulls into the kind of place that rents by the hour. John carries his duffel inside, says he’s going to sleep and if they’re gonna play, they should do it outside. The boys nod vigorously. They’re not looking at him. They’re looking over the roof of the motel to where the pink-and-gold ADULT sign is glowing like a pagan god.

They wait ‘til midnight, because Dean says the night clerks don’t care.

The woman at the desk raises a pierced eyebrow when they walk in, a couple of teenagers trying desperately to look older. She asks to see ID and Dean hands her his driver’s license and a twenty.

She takes a long look at Sam, then hands the card back.

They walk through the deserted store, past the racks of bachelorette party favors and rubber dicks and inflatable partners of all shapes and sizes. The back room is full of DVDs.

That’s how Sam learns about girls.

 

Sam buys something with plot and production value and Dean gives him a one-time pass because it’s his first go. Six months later, when the neon idol rises again, Sam’s seen it eighteen times.

By the next time, he’s figured out something that John and Dean already know well; magazines beat movies. Every time.

 

There are three duffels, and they don’t talk about it. They’re reliable sources of clean socks, Asians, and Johnnie Walker, respectively. For when you need it.

 

Sam takes his duffel to school with him, when he goes.

John and Dean have a long, loud argument that only ends when the hotel manager comes and asks them to leave. They’ve got a case to get to, anyway.

They pack their bags in angry silence, and Dean does the once-over because it’s been his job since he was four.

There’s nothing left behind.

 

The trunk is too empty with only two bags in the back.

Dean knows what’s missing, but he checks the room again anyway.

 

He bites his tongue, but he doesn’t call shotgun.

 

John leaves and Sam comes back.

Dean dies and comes back.

John dies and doesn’t.

It’s Sam who carries his bag inside, that first night at the motel, when Dean’s still processing. It’s good for a bottle of John, Jim, Jack, or Jose, doesn’t matter which. They both need it.

 

Dean takes over bottle duty, which is fine because Sam’s added the laptop to their communal inventory. The next time Dean’s bag rips (freakin witches) he looks at it for a long time, then empties out the pockets and throws it away.

There are only two duffels after that, but there’s still a system.

 

I’m borrowing your shirt, Dean says, already digging through Sam’s bag for his favorite. There’s something heavy at the bottom and Dean thinks maybe that’s where the extra maglight got off to. This is too light to be that.

He flips it up, reading the logo on the bottom.

Then he grins at the bathroom door and beyond it, his little brother.

Sly dog, he mutters, then tosses it back in the bag and keeps looking for his shirt.

 

Sam takes runs in the morning. Dean goes to bars in the evenings. As often as they can manage it, there’s a good four hours apart there. More, if Dean meets someone he likes. They’re close, not conjoined.

So it’s not weird when Dean stays out overnight and comes back in the morning. And Sam’s in the shower which is annoying because Dean’s got a hangover and glitter in his hair and his mouth tastes like something died in there.

He opens the bathroom door and for a minute he’s not sure what he’s looking at. His vision’s still a little blurry but he’s pretty sure there’s a giant slug in the sink.

He blinks at it, but it does not seem prone to attack.

“Sam?” he croaks, suddenly worried that behind the curtain, his brother has fallen victim to another slug.

“Yeah?” Sam answers, sounding lucid and not at all like he’s got a slug munching on his brain.

And then Dean’s vision clears a little bit and the sink-thing comes into focus.

“Gross, man, you left your vagina in the sink.”

Sam laughs.

“Dean, have you _ever_ seen a vagina that looks like that?”

The thing is a translucent blue, full of whorls and pegs and Dean has to admit that no, he has not.

“You left your weird fuck-slug in the sink.”

“I’ll get it in a minute.”

“That’s gross, man,” Dean says, picking it up with a washcloth and tossing it out onto his brother’s pillow.

“Gross? Let’s talk about how the Ai Yong-Ling centerfold is all stuck together.”

“Let’s not. It’s a great loss to us all, Sam.”

Sam scoffs and the conversation lapses while Dean brushes his teeth.

“So about that thing,” he says when he’s done.

“Yeah?”

“Any good?”

“Why, wanna borrow it?”

Dean rolls his eyes and flushes the toilet on the way out, leaving his brother screeching in the suddenly icy water.

**Author's Note:**

> So this ended up being like two stories mushed into one? Idk it made me giggle. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [Original prompt here.](http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/108669.html?thread=40928381#t40928381)


End file.
